For those of you who were never at Ft. Hood, TX, let me provide a bit of background. The post was set up for each brigade to have its own area. These were aligned along an east-west road with the brigade areas to the north and the various post facilities to the south. Another east-west road ran north of the brigade areas with the motor pools and maintenance shops across the road.

Each battalion had its barracks, headquarters building, company headquarters and supply rooms in proximity. Each brigade area had a consolidated dining facility (DFAC) and a small Post Exchange (PX) store with an attached snack bar.

My tale begins in the summer of 1975. I was in C Company of the 1^st Battalion (Armor) 7^th Cavalry Regiment in the 1^st Brigade of the 1^st Cavalry Division. The battalion “greeting of the day” recited with great enthusiasm when saluting officers was “Garry Owen, Sir”.

It was late July, and if you have ever been in central Texas in July, you will know that it is only slightly cooler than the outer plains of Hell. The Command had determined that it was too hot to work or train outdoors so we were released. Unusual, I know. Normally, they would come up with some type of training to be done indoors, but this day, for some unknown reason, they just turned us loose, perhaps because it was only about an hour until the end of the duty day.

Danny and I headed back to the barracks. We had to pass the PX, so we decided to stop at the snack bar for a cold drink. Danny got his usual soda and I bought my usual unsweetened ice tea. The snack bar was very busy and there were no seats inside. The picnic tables outside were also full, so we sat down on a rock wall that ran along the sidewalk to have our drinks. A trash can sat just to my left, between me and the door to the snack bar and Danny was sitting to my right.

We had nearly finished our drinks when, out of the door of the snack bar stepped a spiffy, starched and spit shined butter bar (Second Lieutenant) with an ice cream cone in his hand.

Danny and I shot to our feet, threw our best highballs and loudly sounded out the greeting of the day, “Garry Owen, Sir”.

The startled Lieutenant automatically returned our salutes, in the process stabbing himself in the eye with his ice cream. As he stood there, bemused, with ice cream running down his face, Danny and I di di mau’d around the corner and laughed all the way back to the barracks.